NEWS / THE BRIEFING /
Q
&
A
KEITH
O’LOUGHLIN
SPORTSBOOK DIRECTOR CORAL INTERACTIVE
Q
You’ve recently swapped a
CTO position at Boylesports
for a sportsbook role at Coral
Interactive. What appealed to
you about the move?
Coral Interactive has only been
going about two years so a lot
of aspects of the company have a
start-up energy. I love being a part
of that level of drive and energy,
and I am used to it from running my
own software company in the past.
There are various things I’ve done in
the industry which were a good fit in
terms of what Coral wanted to do in
the next couple of years.
A
Q
What do you anticipate being
your biggest challenge?
Our business has been hugely
successful but we face many
of the same challenges felt across
the sector. My biggest challenge is
growing our product offering, to
make sure we’ve got a best-in-class
range of markets, to grow in-play
and to make sure every aspect of the
user experience, from the website
touch points to customer service, is
best in class. Customers don’t look
at these things separately – they just
want a great experience from their
bookmaker of choice.
A
Q
What work are you expecting
to do on the mobile front?
There’s a lot of ways to build
on our baseline for our mobile
product, which is very strong in
my view. I’ve got hugely ambitious
plans for what we can achieve. I still
think mobile is in its very early days
so I want to innovate and set our
business apart, rather than just keep
up with the leaders. That’s where the
opportunity lies. It was only really in
2013 when mobile was hitting 50% of
revenues for some operators, and it’s
going to be a huge thing for the next
five to six years at least.
A
8
Q
How would you rate Coral’s
mobile and tablet offering?
Our native tablet app is a great
experience. For Wimbledon we
had live prices for all in-play matches,
creating a really smooth experience.
My job is to make sure everything is
as good as it can be from a customer
experience point of view. In some
respects it’s about being the voice of
the customer within the business and
making sure everything we do aligns
properly with those needs.
A
Q
What product innovation are
you excited about?
We saw some very encouraging
signs regarding the Metric
Gaming product (in-play betting
micro markets) during the World
Cup so I would imagine we’ll extend
that moving forward. Customers
were betting on free kicks for
example, whether the player was
going to score or not score, so it
opened up great opportunities.
That is something which is not
only innovative but suits second
screening perfectly.
DUTCH TAX RATE ROW
THREATENS ONLINE
REGULATION
A row over the rate of tax
remote operators should pay
in a regulated Dutch market is
threatening to delay regulatory
progress after the country’s
Social Democratic party said
it would vote against current
proposals.
Draft legislation has
suggested a tax rate of 20%
of gross gaming revenue
should be established for
online gambling, lower than
the 29% rate set for land-based
operators such as Holland
Casino.
Labour MP Mei Li Vos
has criticised the proposals,
labelling them “unacceptable”
and likely to lead to a
consumer shift to online
products, leaving land-based
establishments vulnerable.
A
Q
Coral ran some pretty
aggressive offers ahead of
the World Cup. How are you
going to retain those customers?
We’ve shown over the last year
that we’re able to deliver good
revenues from customers and overall
growth. Now I want to accelerate our
innovation and delivery of value to
customers. So each time they come
back, especially after the World
Cup, they will see they are getting
more value, more markets, and
greater variety of products. It’s also
important to note that we run those
kind of offers for existing customers,
not just new ones. There are releases
of new products every two weeks
and we’re pretty aggressive in
ramping that up.
A
UK-LICENSED BOOKIES TARGETED
WITH RACING LEVY CHANGES
The UK Governmen Ё